


Viva la Vida

by LexyTorell, LorienDarenya



Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter - Laurell K. Hamilton
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-24
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 03:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LexyTorell/pseuds/LexyTorell, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LorienDarenya/pseuds/LorienDarenya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edward and Anita take Peter to Europe for his first major hunt. What happens there will have far-reaching ramifications for years to come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Viva la Vida

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first of many parts to this story. We have taken a little bit of literary license with some of the 'facts' established in the Anita Blake universe. You'll see what we mean as the story goes on. Most of it is assumptions made on some things that were said in the books and running with them. 
> 
> My partner, LorienDarenya, and I both hope you enjoy this story. We've worked hard on making it a must read!

"Almost sunset."

He knew that low, purring voice even without the caress of claws along his cheek. Time had lost all meaning, as had so many other things, swallowed by pain as the vampire currently in possession of Death tried to bend and break him to his will. He hated that parts of him had yielded beneath the persuasions that ran from knives to claws and fangs and everything in between.

Edward thrived on these kinds of things. He had learned how to take them, how to give them, but even he couldn't fight everything forever. Parts of him were already irreparably damaged in deeper ways than physical would ever describe.

The lioness crouching over him let out a low growl that made that thing they had put inside of him surge and stretch, digging claws of its own into his brain so that the world went red for a long, endless moment. He breathed through it, the sound loud and harsh in his ears as he tried to rise above it, to master it, as he had so much over the last month.

"Can't fight it," she sing-songed softly. She who had infected him and made sure he couldn't find any way to end his own life, crouched down closer so that the scent of lion, *lioness*, filled his nose and made his body arch as that thing stretched, flexing itself inside of the prison of his Human skin as the sun sank lower and the moon began to rise.

He knew so very much he couldn't tell anyone. He'd never been this deep into any kind of operation without an option to get information back to someone. But he wasn't anything more, or less, than a captive, a toy for the lioness and, scarier still, the vampire who held her leash. It was the vampire that actually struck fear in Edward, in Death, a thing he'd never expected.

He could handle dead things, wereanimals, Humans. But when they managed to get inside him as these two had, to chip away at the foundations of himself down to the core that was still fundamentally *him*, until memories and pieces of his life began to go missing as if someone had plucked them out of the open book of his mind like tearing out pages, that was what made his stomach tighten and his world narrow down until his breath left him in a low, inhuman sound.

Or maybe that was the lion trying to tear itself free of his body. He arched off the floor of the cage so hard he heard something break. Pain screamed along one arm, his centering in his shoulder as the lioness above him shifted from her half-Human form into the full fledged beast and retreated to a corner, watching with amber eyes as Death writhed.

He lost track of the things that broke, of the pain, of the sounds he made as his body continued to do things it had never been meant to in a slow, torturous wave of muscles and bones popping. A change that should have taken a minute at the most was stretched into an eternity while the lioness and, he realized somehow, somewhere, through all of it, the vampire, watched with hungry eyes.

Pain opened him as it had before. But there was enough pain this time, as his body contorted and screams he never heard became animalistic sounds, that the vampire had free access to every last jumbled thought and emotion.

Every face he had ever seen, everyone he had ever known, every thought he'd ever voiced or not, were there to be examined, completely without permission or the ability to stop the vampire from flipping through them.

Something surfaced, a night that couldn't have been a month ago, could it? It had to have been years, didn't it? Confused, hurting, unable to do anything but watch, he felt the vampire pluck the memory up like picking up any piece of paper and begin to squeeze.

~*~*~*~*~

"Tomorrow's the big day, huh?"

Edward's lips twitched faintly at the corners as he looked across to Anita Blake and lifted an eyebrow. She never had been one for small talk, and truth be told, she was nervous as he was. It wasn't something they'd show to the young man currently alone in his bedroom in the small house located in the wettest part of Vienna. But spoken or not, they both understood it, and knew that on some level, if Peter knew, he'd second guess himself.

Second guessing yourself in their line of work could mean more than fucking up. It could mean dieing. Absently, Edward twirled the wine glass he held in his fingers, amused as Anita imitated him. They pretended that what she had in her glass was as alcoholic as what he had.

"You make it sound like it's easy. Like we're going for a walk in the park or something."

Edward's voice was now only thinly coated with amusement. They were getting to the main event of this entire trip, and the main fear that ate at him in a way as he would let little else do. He set his glass down and locked gazes with her.

"If anything *does* go wrong..."

"Nothing's going to go wrong. We're all as prepared as we could possibly be!" Anita stared at him closely, watching ever nuance and look on his face. Leaning forward herself, she dropped her voice quietly. "Edward, I have to ask you again. Are you having a premonition?"

"No." The answer was so flat, so empty, that it said everything the one word didn't. He hissed out a breath as she invaded his personal space, an act so rare for Anita that he knew she heard everything he didn't want to say.

"Edward, you know as well as I do that sometimes we have feelings about these things. But you also know that if we doubt ourselves or the mission then we can fuck it up just as badly. Don't do this. Either call it off because you have a feeling about it going bad on us or put your own doubts aside. Because not dealing with either of them is going to just make it a self-fulfilling prophecy and neither of us needs that!"

Anita stared down at him trying to figure out just what it was that had Death doubting himself. He never did, not like this. She understood the worry, the fear, for Peter, but dammit, this was overboard even for him.

He shoved to his feet and put distance between them. He paced a short, sharp circuit in front of the wood-burning fireplace as he considered her words, knew the truth of them, and tried to find a response.

"I can't call it off, not now. That'd destroy Peter. I won't have that. And the feelings..."

He hesitated.

"Something's going to go wrong. But I don't think it's anything with you or even him."

Which left the guards, but he knew she knew better than to think his unease was over the people she had trusted enough to bring along. He'd reviewed everyone of them, and had no lack of fatih in them either.

"There's always the chance that it's me being...Human." He made the last sound like an epethet, as if the simple fact that he felt things for his family and friends were some big hole in his armor that he didn't particularly care for. The fact that he felt some unease concerning his own performance through this trip, though, was damn near infuriating.

"So I ask again, if anything goes wrong, will you take care of them? Because I'm not calling it off, Anita. No way, no how."

Anita's stomach tightened, clenching in a tight knot in her stomach. Edward had stayed alive after all this time because of innate luck, or because he had a sense of things. Which meant he could be a bit psychic. The question that, now, after all these years, he was having these doubts, these 'feelings' for lack of a better word, scared her more than a little. Because she couldn't lose him, and neither could Donna and the kids. Hell, she was supposed to be in the wedding in less than two months time!

She didn't say any of these things, however. What she did do was nod in agreement. "Yes. I'll take care of them. You don't even have to ask."

He smiled at that, and for the first time on this trip, he looked tired. "Maybe not, but it's nice to hear, you know?"

He moved back to his seat then, sitting down and swallowing what was left of his wine in one go. Then he went back to twirling the empty glass as he watched Anita watching him.

"What's that look for?"

"Nothing. We're all going to be fine. I'll make sure of it."

~*~*~*~*~

The memory washed away in red. The world smelled like blood and fear and meat. His spine bowed, though somewhere during this personal Hell, he'd gotten onto his stomach so that he curved off the floor until his hands and feet were beneath him.

Not hands, not feet. Half formed paws supported the body that was bloodied and torn and caught somewhere between Human and animal, though not half as gracefully as the lioness's had been. Standing there, as tendons continued to pop and his body to drag itself one agonizing inch at a time from one form to the other, he tried to reach for the memory that had been there moments ago.

Nothing.

Something else slid in to fill that space, a low, throbbing compulsion in which dark eyes and black curls featured. His brain screamed as the face that had a name he couldn't quite grasp was etched there, along with an irrefutable order.

Kill.

More faces, more thoughts that fragmented and spun in and out of existence and then simply fell away, trapped, suppressed, caged as Edward was caged, until there were faces only. No names, no associations save, perhaps, that one single word in an ever loudening mantra.

Kill, kill, kill.

~*~*~*~*~

The crack of a rifle firing was what lead Anita to Peter. At her back, a rat the size of a pony followed, coupled with a wolf of equal size. Both were female, both were her guards. She came up and over the crest of a hill to find Peter firing into the downed, half shapeshifted lion at his feet.

There was more wrong with this picture than the cold-eyed, one-track minded expression on the eighteen-year-old's face. She would think, later, that that was bad enough. But the fact that there wasn't a blond-haired, blue-eyed man with Peter, where she had half expected, half prayed, to find him, was more jarring in that moment.

So she did what any good backup did. She shoved aside all emotion, all thought, and moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with Peter while they emptyed their guns together until the shapeshifter was damn near dismembered. It wouldn't be good enough; they'd burn the body and scatter the ashes just like they might a vampire.

But for now, as the wolf and rat moved in to help further destroy it, Anita turned her gaze on Peter's and held it. She asked one simple question with enough force to jar some emotion back into those dead eyes.

"Where the Hell's Edward, Peter?"

"They took him down! Three of them. Up over that hill!" Peter motioned with the Uzi tucked in against his shoulder. "I tried to get to him and this one attacked me!"

They all began moving, guns up and ready as they moved in that semi-crouched swat walk that allowed them to keep their guns steady. Peter and Anita were back to back with the two guards, so each of them took a quarter of their surroundings. Peter's nerves were taut and he prayed, yes actually prayed, that his father was still alive, still okay.

Coming up over the hill there was nothing. There appeared to be a huge stain of blood and what could be part of a body, with chunks of flesh scattered around the area. It made Peter go pale and curse under his breath.

Anita stared down, trying to find some sign that what they were staring at was or wasn't her best friend. Her hands were curled tightly around her gun, the nuckles white as she stared around for something to shoot at, something to *do* to make the moment shatter and time to stop standing still. The wolf crept forward even as Nicky emerged from another direction.

"It's his blood." There was no expression in the werelion's eye. Anita turned on him.

"What?"

"Edward. It's his blood."

"And the..." She hadn't had trouble looking at, referring to, a body in years. But she couldn't finish the sentence.

"I...don't know," was the less sure answer. His face changed now, unhappy because he could feel the emotions roiling off of Anita in that moment.

"No."

A flat, inflectionless denial. She didn't say it. Glancing over her shoulder, she locked gazes with Peter.

Peter managed to rally the blank look. He'd been hanging around with Edward too long not to be able to use it. His eyes, however, were another story. He hadn't the experience or the time on the job to be able to hide the fear, the anger, the sheer denial that flared up there. The young man shook his head, stepping over toward the body.

He knelt down and stared at the remains, trying to let his eyes adjust so he could follow the trail left by those who had killed; mutilated, the body in question. Swallowing hard, he fought against the tears.

"This is not my father," he denied, trying to make himself feel as certain as his voice sounded.

God help her, Anita agreed with him. In a very rare moment of self-delusion, she joined Peter and stared hard down at the body, refusing to give it a name. She simply let herself detach from the situation, to ignore the smell of outhouse and slaughter house that permeated the air. The wolf, a relatively new addition to the guard roster and one Edward himself had approved just as she herself had, placed her head against Anita's back.

That was both worse and better as she smelled pack. She felt herself reassured for just a moment, even as Nicky joined them and reached out to touch the body.

"Nicky-"

He was lifting something before Anita could stop him, picking through the carnage with the disassociative expression of a good body guard and an excellent sociopath. Silently, he displayed a band soaked in blood.

"I'm sorry, Anita," he said, and then glanced at Peter, offering the bloody, simplistic band on his palm in silence. His apology to the young man who stared down at the grizzly finding was sincere. He had known and worked with this young man, with *Edward*, enough to feel regret even without Anita's emotions to give him that reaction.

Reaching out, Peter cursed his shaking hand as he picked it up out of the 'lion's hand and studied it. He brushed his thumb over the intricate etching that circled the band. He'd seen this band when his father had bought it. They'd been preparing for the trip. It was the wedding band that went with the huge engagement ring he'd bought.

"No!" he retorted firmly. "It isn't him. Until we've had this...body...DNA matched, it's not him."

He stood up, senses stretched to the max as he listened to the sounds of the night around them. "We're not done. At least I'm not. I'm going to find these bastards...and my father."

Anita swallowed hard, aware of heat trying to rise to prick the back of her eyes. She wanted to tell Peter that he was right, that this was all wrong. She wanted to believe it, too, desperately and with every iota of her being. But with Edward's words from the night before in her head, she simply coudln't.

That didn't mean she wouldn't let Peter do what he wanted, what he *needed*. That didn't mean she wouldn't let the wolf and the rat and even Nicky start tracking as if they were a group of blood hounds. Part of her hoped, with ever fading resilience, that they'd somehow come out on top, that they'd somehow come back with Edward.

Part of her knew they wouldn't.

~*~*~*~*~

There was more to the memory, though most of it was lost in the before and the after. He had been close enough that had the animals that had taken him down not made sure their scent mixed and mingled and overpowered his own, had he not been so badly hurt, so incapacitated by the mental claws of the vampire that had goudged into his mind without them ever meeting even while his pets spilled Edward's blood and made sure that it was anywhere and everywhere but where he lay, he might have been found, might have even called out. But even without touching him, without seeing him, the Master vampire had gotten inside his head and made sure that Death had no other recourse but silence and eventual unconsciousness.

That pain, though, had been a very pale imitiation of what he was being put through now. He had been raked by claws and teeth, been marked by fangs, been mind-raped until he hadn't known anything but the memories that were slowly, systematically, being drawn out one by one and discarded, burned on a mental bonfire as he continued to shift.

There had to be an end. The single thought was a desperate scream as the lion continued to pull itself piece by piece from him, tawny fur washing along a form still not quite cat, but far from Human anymore. As if in mocking reply, the vampire produced another memory, another pair of faces he could no longer put names to. It had been a beginning, one he'd expected would have a happy ending.

Death having a happy ending. How laughable.

~*~*~*~*~

"What do you think?"

Edward asked Peter first. Anita had a slightly glazed look to her face, that kind that some women got when you brought them along on shopping trips they didn't want to be on. She had tried to suggest that he wait, or that he take Nathaniel once they got back, but something in his gut had rebelled against it. Shrugging, and smiling with an ease he didn't feel for a moment, he passed the ring to Peter.

"If you look really close, it looks like it's ringed with some of the runes she throws," he commented, pointing at one particular area of the engraving. Peter grinned then and nodded, letting his grin turn into a smirk. "I think she'd like it. But I think you could make her a ring made out of pipe cleaners and she'd love it."

"Cheap, effective, I like his solution." Anita was grinning now as Edward rolled his eyes at her.

"Just because you haven't had the balls to get rings for your guys doesn't mean some of us can't blow some cash to do so."

"You're going to blow some cash buying my guys rings? Edward, I didn't know you cared," came the quick retort. A smirk lit her face at the look he sent her way.

Peter stifled a laugh, turning it into a cough, his eyes dancing in amusement. Oh, that was good. He loved it when Anita managed to get his Dad.

"Keep it up," he warned, though his lips curved in unfeigned amusement, "and I'll make sure we walk outta here with rings for every damn one of your, what, fifteen lovers? I'm including Jade."

Peter's shoulders were shaking now as he watched the interplay. If they were anything but friends, they'd piss each other off. Or maybe it was because they were friends that they *could* piss each other off and just as quickly recover from it.

"I'm going down the isle, Anita, can you do any less?"

Oh, a challenge, Peter loved it.  He silently passed the ring back to his dad, watching Anita's face as it washed with emotions.

Anita leaned her hip on the counter and crossed her arms over her chest. "You know what, Edward. You marry Asher and I'll marry the rest. Then you can listen to his incessant tantrums for the rest of your life."

The young man knew what his father's reaction to that would be. Well, to Asher, that is. He'd heard more than enough from Anita and her Father to know Asher would be dead inside a week if his father were involved.

"And Hell will freeze over," Edward said, lip curling as amusement drained away. "Last I heard, your gold tiger to call was crawling on his knees, and that boy still wasn't happy. Let Jean-Claude marry him, call it good. Either that, or just shoot him." His tone said he liked the second idea a lot more.

They both knew, as they stared one another down, that eventually Asher *would* have to die.

Anita's face went blank and for a moment as she met his gaze. It wasn't that she didn't *know* the truth of his words. It was that she didn't want to deal with it. She'd been pushing it off for a while now. She loved him. Jean Claude loved him. Killing him would be like killing a part of herself. So far, since returning from Philadelphia, he'd been sort of behaving himself.

She didn't fool herself that it would last. With Asher, it never did.

"You can't shoot him, Edward. I wouldn't want to give you that much satisfaction." Her lips quirked upward slightly, diffusing the moment. She knew he was right and he knew he was right. Anita was just going to push it off for a while longer yet.

Edward smirked faintly as he turned away. For a moment, his voice was Ted's, his face pleasant as he purchased the ring without another word as he considered her words and simply let her recover. Then he was turning back, shoving the velvet box in his pocket.

"I suppose I can't say you don't let me have *any* fun after Colorado..."

Peter choked. Whether Edward meant the comment sexually or not, the younger man took it as such.

Rolling her eyes at that, Anita started out of the jewelry store. "Close your mouth, Peter. You're father's having delusions of grandeur again."

"That wasn't what you called it in Colorado," he called after her, cheerfully. He was laughing as he walked out, Peter trailing after him in a kind of amused horror. Edward knew that when it came down to it, Peter knew just as well as he and Anita did that they weren't sharing a bed.

Still, it was fun to get a reaction out of her. The smile that he shot Anita's very straight back as she walked out ahead of them was all amusement, that mix of Edward and Ted that was the real thing.

Peter couldn't help but smile as he saw it. That was worth the near heart attack, really.

~*~*~*~*~

Everything Edward was, everything he had become, everything he had been for the passed six years was torn away in a final burst of pain that drove him to his belly as his world fragmented. His head came to rest between his paws, his body and mind exhausted and all energy spent so that the vampire's final preparation of his perfectly crafted weapon was almost heart-breakingly simple.

The final pieces of a person who had risen from the ashes of Edward the sociopath to become Ted Forrester, to love Donna and Peter and Rebecca Parnell, to regard Anita Blake and her odd asortment of lovers as friends, died in the flare of the beast that surged up to fill amber eyes. Behind the animal was another beast, one who would wear a Human face and who did not know any of those names. He knew the faces, knew that they were people to be destroyed. But before them, were others, one of which was crossing the cage to him.

"Look at me, kitty, kitty."

Lips curled back from fangs, and Hell's fires burned in the lion's eyes. But he had no energy to rise, no way to get to his feet or to fight, though every instinct screamed at him to do just that. To kill the threat before it killed him.

But his head did come up, dragged up by the force of that voice as the vampire leaned down and got far closer than anyone should have a right to with a shapeshifter so new. That had been part of the idea of dragging the beast from the Human's body a piece at a time, so that he could strike like the snake he was and begin to feed from the exhausted cat.

There came a point when the change couldn't be sustained. Even as the vampire fed, fur flowed away and the Human body of Death reemerged. For an endless moment, blue eyes locked on darker ones; no recognition, no emotion, but still with a beast raging in their depths. The moment passed, as blood was pulled from veins, as the heartbeat slowed, faultered, and finally failed.

He had seen his own death in the beast's eyes, no matter if he were Human or lion. He had seen that, and wholely accepted it, if that was what it took to remake Death into the truest incarnation of his name.

If that was the cost of bringing down the woman and all her various lovers, of letting the world burn as the Dark Mother had wanted, then the Master Vampire responsible for Edward's recreation would gladly accept his own fate.

It was very symmetrical, after all.

Death for Death.

He liked it.


End file.
